Megrahi set to name US ­citizen as prime suspect who hid behind terror alias of Abu Elias

Sunday August 23,2009
By Ben Borland

AN AMERICAN citizen is to be named by the Lockerbie bomber as the man who really carried out the terrorist attack ...

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Lawyers for the bomber were to argue that an “elusive” terrorist codenamed Abu Elias planted the bomb in December 1988, causing the deaths of 270 innocent people. Megrahi is now expected to identify the man behind this alias.

The Scottish Sunday Express tracked this man down to his home in the US, and he strongly denied having anything to do with the atrocity. However, we can reveal that he has connections to at least two international terrorists and a Palestinian terror group, as well as links to the US intelligence services. The man, who works as a schools engineer for the US government, was to become the central figure in Megrahi’s aborted appeal.

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However, Christine Grahame MSP, who visited Megrahi in Greenock prison and campaigned for his release, is believed to be considering naming the man in the Scottish Parliament chamber.

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She said: “It is apparent that US intelligence has known or must have known the primary suspect of the Lockerbie bombing was alive and living safely in Washington. “There has been a suggestion made that he is in some way an ‘intelligence asset’ for the US and that is why he has been allowed to live in peace.

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The man Megrahi believes was Abu Elias now lives in a suburban neighbourhood near Washington’s Dulles airport, just a few miles from the White House and the Lockerbie memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. He even has his own Facebook social network page. He is the nephew of Syrian terror warlord Ahmed Jibril, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).

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A source close to Megrahi said yesterday that ‘Elias’ could have been spying for the Americans. The source said: “Not only was Abu Elias known to the Americans, but what if he was working for them? The guy comes into the US from the former Soviet Union, he’s the nephew of Ahmed Jibril – the Bin Laden of his day – and he just strolls into the US?

“I think they turned him, and I think he operated as a double agent. “Khreeshat said if they had waited one more day they would have got Elias in the Autumn Leaves raid.Goben says Elias put the bomb into Jafar’s case without his knowledge.

“Abu Elias was a prime suspect. An American double agent was responsible for bringing down an American plane. How good a reason for a cover-up would that be?”

One of Megrahi's leading supporters at Holyrood, the SNP MSP for South of Scotland, Christine Grahame, is planning to use next week's debate to name a Syrian exile living under US protection in Washington DC as the true mastermind of the Lockerbie bombing, under parliamentary privilege.

Grahame said the man – who works as a cleansing engineer – had been named in Megrahi's appeal documents as a relative of one of the first leading suspects for the attack, the Syrian terrorist Ahmed Jibril of the pro-Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/24/lockerbie-bomber-snp